Saturday, 20 September 2014

I'm not sure I'd agree ... I think it's the very epitome of a girls' film. But as I'd started the holiday at the Midland Hotel, where Trevor Howard stayed during the making of the film, I couldn't resist breaking the homeward journey south with the full Brief Encounter Experience on Carnforth station. Free to get in - the film runs on a loop so you could settle down in old-fashioned cinema seats for the whole afternoon - and there's tea and homemade buttered Bara brith in the old station master's office, where Celia Johnson used to warm herself by the stove when they were filming. No Banbury cakes, though. They ought to have Banbury cakes. Fresh this morning.

One night they didn't finish filming until 7.30am by which time, the fish train from Aberdeen had gone through - leaving a smell of herrings. Happy? No, not re-all-y.

Nobody there but us and a few old train buffs who knew every line of the film, pointing out details we'd never spotted before like the train driver leaning out of the express in the opening sequence. This was 1945 and the driver wouldn't have seen a station lit up at night since the start of the war. But by then it was almost over and there wasn't much likelihood of bombing raids on Carnforth.

Far too late, it dawned on me that we should have made a detour here while we were still in the Lake District. So that's still on the bucket list.

PS I completely forgot to mention in the post about Morecambe this amazing secondhand bookshop on the promenade - keep walking past the seaside rock shops - which looks (and smells) like something out of Diagon Alley. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to stumble across the mummified body of a booklover who got lost in the towering stacks.

13 comments:

'Mind my Banburys' Is that a line from the film or have I imagined it? I absolutely adore Joyce Carey in Brief Encounter and yes, it is a girl's film. The Cruel Sea, now that's a boy's film although it's one of my favourites too and you could watch In Which We Serve in between Brief Encounter and The Cruel Sea which would make a nice sequence.

Coincidence or what! I wrote a post about Carnforth on my blog at the end of August and mentioned so many of the things you mention (Banburys, Celia Johnson warming herself in the station master's room, the avoidance of bombing raids, and how you can sit in a cinema seat and watch the film on a loop). Uncanny!

I wish they'd had Banbury cakes in the cafe, Jane. The chap who runs it told us he was longing to stage a vignette - and knock them over like in the film. I have a feeling that everybody who goes there knows it word for word like we do! Did you fall about laughing every time the express went through? Seemed like every five minutes! We dabbed our eyes and longed for Trevor Howard - though the more I watch it, the more cynical I feel about his ability to pick up ladies in the Kardomah!